72 WArriNG AREA ^........ i.. >>: .. .11 ' -I '\ "." ....,.. . ,/' l /f" ft ':'" -', ,:::: f' % &; )[ ; ,: ' " } , : , /. " :: " " , .,, , ''''''' A; " ::'-'. ".- ':-::=:;. ,-' , '.... ,', / ,:::< ;;",."" "Jt :""'" \ ' ' I ,<' '_,'( , .' , .:1% , ' " , , , : , :; .' :i."; ... .1 "'" " -ff , -" < , %J, ,..', ..<, "1 ( , , "".:,:,,;:. )I:::L'T1';' ",:t. :- ",.,:'Y" ,,', .: .. ': / ' ..... ::::i: :: :;:;;n; Yn j: .. y.....- \ .. :.-. ..::t.I :' f .- ';': j ;;\ ". gS ß. ; .:?:; . .,: '.: i..:.; 1 rt ; :.-;::-..:.-. . ç-;..::.: : '::: :!:::; ;:;:: -' .. ". .....".. -': -ffi $E:? 1: ' "'.,;"" MERGEN,,, jf 2 j j " , .."'."::i....:>....;. ::'i-ß'="t. li ;;E.':i4. )Jj :,-.,è,' , ''] already know he's gone-it's been on the Internet." . to head MCA while the search for a C.E.O. continued. Meyer, a high-school dropout and former marine, who started C.A.A. with Ovitz-and had provided an affable counterbalance to Ovitz's steely demeanor-became MC1\s presi- dent and chief operating officer in Au- gust, 1995. Even Meyer's friends-and they are legion in the Hollywood com- munity-rolled their eyes at his ascen- sion. Meyer himself told me, "I know these people looked at me like Cin- derellàs stepsisters looked at her. " Meyer soon brought in a longtime friend and consigliere, the entertainment lawyer Howard Weitzman. Weitzman, for his part, brought in a former law partner, Karen Randall, to replace the general counsel, Robert HadL Then Meyer hired another C.A.A. agent, Sanford Climan, who, as a Harvard M.B.A., had provided Ovitz with busi- ness expertise in corporate transactions. And Edgar, Jr., selected Bruce Hack, from Seagram in New York, as MC1\s chief financial officer. In this new group, there was a marked preponderance of people who had either no experience in managing a giant corporation or no ex- . perience in running any facet of the en- tertainment business. But, whatever Bronfman and his new team lacked in experience, they made up for in convic- tion-and contempt for the past. A for- mer MCA executive recalls entering Bruce Hack's office, unannounced, and overhearing Hack on the phone to some- one in the Seagram office in New York. Wasserman did not believe in formal or- ganization charts, because he believed that the scope of the duties of his smart, seasoned executives should not be con- stricted, and now this man heard Hack saying, "They don't even have a corporate chart-can you believe it? They are brain -dead out here, just brain -dead!" H ISTORICALLY, MCA was a tough, conservative, bottom-line shop. For decades, the unwritten dress code had been white shirts, dark suits, dark ties. (In the eighties, standards slipped, and blue shirts were more common.) Sheinberg was notorious for berat- ing executives in front of their peers, and quarterly meetings came to be re- ferred to as "quarterly beatings." He was a demanding, hands-on manager, THE NEW YORKER, MAY II, 1998 who insisted on detailed reports from his department heads and trained a cadre of saVV)T, thick-skinned executives. To these people, the experience of re- porting to the new Seagram manage- ment seemed strange indeed. A former MCA executive told me, "Strong peo- ple, raised by Lew and Sid to speak their mind. . . when asked to do silly things, had a tendency to say, 'Are you out of your mind?' " But if the business acumen they had been accustomed to was miss- ing, the "people skills," for which Meyer had become famous as an agent, were much in evidence. He was outgoing, warm, back-slapping, and his constant refrain was "Let me know what I can do to help you." Meyer professed great respect for Wasserman and Sheinberg. "Thirty- three years ago, I used to come here as a messenger and look in the commissary and watch those guys eat!" he told me when I spoke with him recently: "To me, they were the last of the Hollywood moguls." His style, he made plain, was different. (When I met with him, Meyer was wearing a flannel shirt, with the shirttails out, over jeans.) Bronfman's team instituted casual Fridays and town meetings, where employees from around the world, linked by satellite, could ques- tion their managers. I asked Meyer how he saw his role as president and C.O.O. "I'd rather be part of a well-synchronized team than a group of all-stars," he said. "I believe in synergy and teamwork, as corny as it sounds. It's a culture change. We've bro- ken down walls to encourage creativity across all of our businesses." The new management claims credit for improved health benefits at Universal, a Christmas party, and even better food in the com- missary (in particular, good coffee). Ultimatel)!, almost all the top-level ex- ecutives of MCA were fired or resigned in a preëmptive strike. Bronfman told me, with apparent pride, "There's almost nobody here in top management who was here before." A former MCA execu- tive says, "It was their agenda to replace not only the creative people-that usu- ally happens-but the infrastructure, the institutional memory of the company: legal, pension, human relations, account- ing. . . . They felt everyone had to go, because everyone was tainted with this disease. The disease was the way Lew did it." These days, Shein berg is wont to